The
company's Julie Strawson told OUT-LAW
Radio, the weekly technology law podcast, that companies which
did not ensure that they had licences for all fonts were opening
themselves up to the same liabilities as they would if they used
pirated software on their machines.
"The whole point of looking at fonts is to
ensure that you don't have any gaps in your software asset
management process," said Strawson, the marketing director of
Monotype for Europe. "You're really wasting your time if you don't
include fonts, because you could still have security, workflow
issues and be left with a liability at the end of the day if you
don't include them."
Fonts are, in fact, software, and every one of
them needs a licence. That includes not just those within a word
processing or desktop publishing application, but those used by a
computer's operating system or a television set top box's on screen
messages.
Monotype sells a product called Fontwise which trawls
computer systems, finds all the fonts sitting on it and tells a
company which of them it has a licence for and which are illegal.
Strawson says that those font audits can even save a company
money.
"A number of large publishers use the [audit]
service. Obviously most companies want to be legal these days, so
they blanket license," she said. "They say 'I've got 600 users so
I'll get a 600 user font licence'. But if you're designing a
magazine there might only be two designers on the magazine that
need the font, so by actually taking control they are now
understanding that they can share font licenses better and cut out
that blanket licensing and reduce costs. Future Publishing saved
£25,000 in six months doing that, just on font software."
Most people receive fonts as part of software
packages, where the licence for the fonts is paid for in bulk by
the software manufacturer and that cost passed on to the
customer.
Violations occur when a person sends a font to
another person who does not have a licence for it. That often
happens if someone is sending a document which needs a font which
is not installed on the recipient's machine.
While it happens frequently between personal
computer users, Monotype is particularly focused on businesses
which use fonts without licences, and has joined anti-piracy lobby
group the Business Software Alliance in order to clamp down on
companies using unlicensed fonts.
Strawson said that one industry which often
uses pirated fonts is the design and publishing industry, which is
more dependent than most on typefaces.
"This is a very big issue in the creative
professional marketplace where graphic design goes on," said
Strawson. "There's quite a culture we find that's quite tough to
change, where fonts are sent along with jobs to printers and repro
houses and so on."
"We're very keen to try and stop that illegal
redistribution of fonts. It's very inexpensive when you consider
that they are a necessary tool for the printer to produce his
product and the printer is making a profit on that product," she
said.
